Search

International audience; Purpose: Social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is a methodology under continuous development, which may be applied at different scales: from products to economic sectors up to systems at region (meso) and country (macro) scales. Traditionally, SLCA has been focusing on the assessment of negative social externalities, whereas also positive social impacts could be associated to human interventions. The purpose of the present study is to understand how positive impacts are defined in published literature and how they could be assessed through indicators. The aim is to clarify the concept among scholars and to support decision making in business and policy context. Methods: The study uses a systematic review approach in order to analyse the types of indicators adopted. In the field of SLCA and according to Paragahawewa et al. (2009), '[I]ndicators are 'pointers' to the state of the impact categories (and/or subcategories) being evaluated by the SLCA'. Indicators can be quantitative, semi-quantitative or qualitative (UNEP/SETAC 2009). This review was carried out in order to identify and analyse positive impacts and indicators. After careful scrutiny, 47 papers containing theoretical frameworks were considered, as well as 46 papers presenting case studies. Results and discussion: Compared to environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), where the presence of positive impacts is lower, evaluating benefits or positive impacts can still play a major role in SLCA (Benoît et al. 2010). A quarter of the analysed papers on theoretical frameworks take into account the topic of positive impacts and indicators. Results from case study analysis highlight as 'workers', was the most considered stakeholder (in 100 % of the analysed papers), and as the majority of positive indicators used in the case study analysed are recorded in relation to 'other value chain actors'. Within the concept of 'positive impacts', no reference should be made merely to the utility of a product or service. In a broader sense, we could refer to solutions improving the conditions of one or various stakeholders involved. In other words, these are solutions that carry a positive contribution to one or more stakeholders without harming others. Conclusions: So far, positive impacts are barely covered in literature. There is a clear need of streamlining definition and indicators, especially if they should be applied in a policy context complementing traditional'and often monetary-based, cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

International audience; Highlights • We emphasize the end of the boom-and-bust development pattern in the Brazilian Amazon. • Deforestation and socioeconomic development follow an inverted U-shape relationship. • Household incomes are greater in stabilized areas than in areas undergoing deforestation. • Environmental governance efforts fostered the emergence of EKC. Abstract Socioeconomic development in the Brazilian Amazon is currently reaching national averages although deforestation activity has been declining for a decade. As a consequence, recent studies rejected the widely agreed boom-and-bust development hypothesis that deforestation first generates an economic boom, which is then followed by a collapse as forest resources are depleted. Here, we confirm these studies that there is no boom-bust cycle and suggest that a new pattern of relationship between deforestation and socioeconomic development has emerged following an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). In this scenario, environmental degradation increases in the early stages of economic development and decreases in later stages as the economy develops and wellbeing increases. To validate this assumption, we conducted the first sub-municipal analysis of socioeconomic development and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon for the 2000–2010 period. Our results confirm the emergence of an EKC relationship with a turning point beyond which socioeconomic growth does not appear anymore to be a driver of deforestation. We also emphasize that areas subjected to active deforestation in 2010 present lower socio-Author manuscript version economic indicators than stabilized areas, pointing to the precarious socioeconomic situation of areas still undergoing active deforestation. We put these results in perspective by considering Brazilian efforts to ensure a transition in environmental governance with the objective of promoting land use sustainability through control of deforestation at the same time as supporting socioeconomic development.

Agricultural systems continuously evolve and are forced to change as a result of a range of global and local driving forces. Agricultural technologies and agricultural, environmental and rural development policies are increasingly designed to contribute to the sustainability of agricultural systems and to enhance contributions of agricultural systems to sustainable development at large. The effectiveness and efficiency of such policies and technological developments in realizing desired contributions could be greatly enhanced if the quality of their ex-ante assessments were improved. Four key challenges and requirements to make research tools more useful for integrated assessment in the European Union were defined in interactions between scientists and the European Commission (EC), i.e., overcoming the gap between micro–macro level analysis, the bias in integrated assessments towards either economic or environmental issues, the poor re-use of models and hindrances in technical linkage of models. Tools for integrated assessment must have multi-scale capabilities and preferably be generic and flexible such that they can deal with a broad variety of policy questions. At the same time, to be useful for scientists, the framework must facilitate state-of-the-art science both on aspects of the agricultural systems and on integration. This paper presents the rationale, design and illustration of a component-based framework for agricultural systems (SEAMLESS Integrated Framework) to assess, ex-ante, agricultural and agri-environmental policies and technologies across a range of scales, from field–farm to region and European Union, as well as some global interactions. We have opted for a framework to link individual model and data components and a software infrastructure that allows a flexible (re-)use and linkage of components. The paper outlines the software infrastructure, indicators and model and data components. The illustrative example assesses effects of a trade liberalisation proposal on EU’s agriculture and indicates how SEAMLESS addresses the four identified challenges for integrated assessment tools, i.e., linking micro and macro analysis, assessing economic, environmental, social and institutional indicators, (re-)using standalone model components for field, farm and market analysis and their conceptual and technical linkage.